2020: Monty Python's Spamalot by Eric Idle & John du Prez

Monty Python’s Spamalot.  Book and lyrics by Eric Idle.  Music by John du Prez & Eric Idle.  One Eyed Man Productions at Canberra Theatre Playhouse, February 26 – March 1, 2020.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
February 27

The Round Table

Director – Richard Carroll; Musical Supervisor – Conrad Hamill; Choreographer – Cameron Mitchell; Designer – Emma Vine; Lighting Designer – Kate Sfetkidis; Rehearsal Vocal Supervisor – Michael Tyack; Production Manager & Sound Designer – Carl McKinnon

Cast (alphabetical order)
Marty Alix, Blake Appelqvist, Cramer Cain, Amy Hack, Rob Johnson, Josie Lane, Abe Mitchell and Jane Watt

Photos: John McRea

We all sing together

I loved two features of this production – especially in comparison with the original big-stage shows.  It’s awfully grotty; and we all became part of the show, right down to Rob Miller, the peasant seated next to her husband (?) in B15 (ie B-ONE-S) – he was too shy to go on stage – who was awarded with all due ceremony for inadvertently discovering the Holy Grail.

And it was a delight to participate in the standing ovation!  And, of course, all singing “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life”.

King Arthur meets

the knights who say 'Ni!'

Richard Carroll is a board member of In The Pipeline (Arts) Ltd, which runs Sydney’s Hayes Theatre Co, and, like this week’s other production connected to the Hayes Theatre Co, H.M.S. Pinafore at The Q, Queanbeyan, it was a joy to be able to laugh at the absurdity of life in the face of our summer, haec aestas horribilis, this year.  I haven’t yet been to the tiny 100 seat Hayes Theatre itself, but Carroll and his designer Emma Vine have made a highly successful transition onto the larger stage and auditorium of Canberra’s Playhouse which bodes well for the rest of their tour this year.

I would like to make special mention of Amy Hack as Patsy.  Not only were her coconut clip-clops exactly in time, but she stopped our inane laughter as Cramer Cain’s completely obtuse King Arthur sang about how he was “Alone”.  Her feelings, being so ignored, created the one genuinely sad, and serious, moment; giving purpose to the whole play.  Dramatically, her performance was my Holy Grail.

The whole cast, many switching between named roles and playing in the often weird apparitions in the ensemble, kept the show moving beautifully.  Marty Alix executed a great exit to the toilet as Sir Robin; Josie Lane complained wonderfully about not having any lines for most of the musical, despite having the female romantic lead as Lady of the Lake; Cramer Cain had, I thought, a much greater atmosphere of absolute authority (completely undermined by reality like our many recent Australian prime ministers) than the famous Tim Curry (who seemed to smile too much) as King Arthur; Jane Watt’s Sir Belvedere was brilliant in something like chain mail; Sir Galahad, by one-time Canberran, Blake Appelqvist, danced amazingly; Rob Johnson was so often something else that Prince Herbert melted into the crowd (was he the condescending Frenchman fooled by the empty wooden rabbit?); while Abe Mitchell as Sir Lancelot played the male romantic ‘grail’ perfectly.

If this is confusing, don’t worry.  You’ll be on a par with the knights who say ‘Ni!’.

Just enjoy!

What happened to my part?

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2020: H.M.S. Pinafore by Gilbert & Sullivan

H.M.S. Pinafore.  Music by Arthur Sullivan. Libretto by W.S. Gilbert.  Hayes Theatre Co, presented by Siren Theatre Co, at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, February 25-29, 2020.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
February 25

Director – Kate Gaul; Musical Director – Zara Stanton; Choreographer – Ash Bee; Production Designer – Melanie Liertz; Lighting Designer – Fausto Brusamolino; Sound Designer – Nate Edmondson

Cast: (alphabetical)
Katherine Allen, Gavin Brown, Thomas Campbell, Jermaine Chau, Tobias Cole, Sean Hall, Billie Palin, Bobbi-Jean Henning, Dominic Lui, Roey O’Keefe, Zachary Selmes, Zara Stanton

Buttercup - one-time wetnurse to Ralph and Capt Corcoran -
sells provisions to the sailors as the play begins.

Capt Corcoran at sixes and sevens at the beginning of Act Two
(the balls represent cannonballs in the original)

If you wonder that a bit of political satire from the UK in 1878 could be seriously funny in 2020, just begin from Captain Corcoran of Her Majesty’s Ship Pinafore pleading wonderfully mournfully with the Moon in Heaven

Fair moon, to thee I sing,
Bright regent of the heavens,
Say, why is everything
Either at sixes or at sevens?

In this summer of turmoil, of drought, fire, flooding rains, coal mining to reduce CO2 emissions, politically motivated sports-rorts grants and now coronavirus, all overseen by our equivalent of Sir Joseph Porter in the guise of Prime Minister Scott Morrison, I felt quite in tune with the Captain’s confusion.  As Sir Joseph sings

Sir Joseph Porter secluded in his cabin.

I am the monarch of the sea,
The ruler of the Queen’s Navee…
But when the breezes blow,
I generally go below,
And seek the seclusion that a cabin[et] grants…

From holiday in Hawaii to ‘cabinet-in-confidence’, our world is in more than sixes and sevens.  A mad-cap production of H.M.S. Pinafore was just what I needed.

Semaphore signalling:
"For he is an Englishman!"

Political correctness has caught me by the balls, so to speak: the non-profit left-wing communal basis of the Hayes Theatre Company has meant that I can find the names of the cast only in alphabetical order, without reference to who plays which parts.  But since, as Sir Joseph, Captain Corcoran and all the crew agree

Dick Deadeye calling for rebellion against the upper classes

A British tar is a soaring soul,
As free as a mountain bird,
His energetic fist should be ready to resist
A dictatorial word…
He never should bow down to a domineering frown,
Or the tang of a tyrant tongue.


So I can’t make pronouncements on the best performers (especially since half the time men are played by women, and the other half vice versa), but I can say the whole conception of this production is in the long tradition of apparently nonsensical satire which began probably long before Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (411 BCE, when the women very sensibly refused to have sex with their men while they still kept fighting The Peloponnesian War, 431–404 BCE), passing through Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (in an appropriately absurd showing by Lakespeare in Canberra this month), my favourite novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (by Laurence Sterne, in nine volumes 1759 – 1767), on to Monty Python’s Spamalot (to be seen here this week in a One Eyed Man Production), and Shaun Micallef’s weekly Mad As Hell (on the ABC, which at least one member of the Prime Minister – Scott Morrison’s – government wants to close down).

Phew!  I feel better already.  Thank you, Kate Gaul, Zara Stanton, Ash Bee, Nelanie Liertz, Fausto Brusamolino, Nate Edmondson and all the cast and crew of Hayes Theatre Co for bringing me back to my senses.  We all need a good dose of Gilbert & Sullivan every now and then – and this is a good one indeed.

 Ordinary Seaman Ralph Rackstraw declares his love for Josephine, Capt Corcoran's daughter

Sir Joseph, who expected to marry her, is horrified at Josephine and Ralph kissing.
Buttercup explains that she mixed the children up:
Ralph is really upper class, and so becomes Captain and marries Josephine.
Corcoran reverts to ordinary seaman and marries Buttercup.
Sir Joseph retires to his cabin with two young women.

A little further research has revealed the named roles.  In keeping with the company's collaborative nature, I list them here:

Buttercup - Thomas Campbell

Capt Corcoran - Tobias Cole

Sir Joseph Porter - Josef Ber

Josephine- Hannah Greenshields

Violin - Dominic Lui

Ralph Rackstraw - Billie Palin

Music Director - Zara Stanton

Dick Dead Eye - Sean Hall

Ensemble - Bobbie Jean Henning, Elora Ledferm, Gavin Brown, Zachary Selmes

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2020: Hell Ship by Michael Veitch

Hell Ship – The Journey of the Ticonderoga   by Michael Veitch with co-writer Peter Houghton.  The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, February 21-22, 2020.

Presented by Chester Creative
Performer: Michael Veitch
Director: Peter Houghton
Lighting Designer: Tom Willis
Music: Thomas Veitch

Reviewed by Frank McKone
February 21

Hell Ship  is both entertaining and informative.  Researching one’s own family history and presenting something significant, as Michael Veitch has done, adds to our understanding of Australian history.  The story of Michael’s great-great-grandfather turns out to be highly relevant today.

In earlier times, too, there was a tradition of itinerant solo performers travelling the outback which still continues to entertain grey nomads in caravan parks around the country today: storytelling, poetry and bush songs are the usual fare in my experience.  But Hell Ship is a different kettle of fish.  Melbourne based Chester Creative has the touring game highly organised, offering a complete show – actor, set, lighting and sound all included – to venues with the right technical equipment and experienced staff, at a price. 

The two nights at The Q are well worth the money.  Veitch takes on the role of his great-great-grandfather at a point much later in his life than his arrival in Melbourne in 1852 and his marriage to Miss Morrison, the young woman who had helped him so well to cope with the ever-increasing deaths, from typhus, on board the Ticonderoga.  He is now alone, after her recent death, and needs to tell his story – to a young sick boy whose fever can now be treated with better knowledge and new medicines like Aspirin.

As the old ship’s surgeon recalls boarding the Ticonderoga in England and events through the 100 days of sail it took to reach Melbourne, he takes on the voices and characteristics of the people involved, from the government official organising the emigration, through the people with many accents from Scotland, Ireland and England whose poverty drives them to seek a new life far away, to Captain Boyle – an ethical, thoroughly authorative figure, respected by all – and to the pilot in Port Phillip Bay who has to order the ship to disembark at an isolated beach for a long quarantine period, during which many more people died.  A quarter of the ship’s 800 passengers and crew did not survive.

We never see the young boy, hidden in his iron-frame hospital bed, but we are as alternately excited and horrified as he, and as relieved as his fever cools, and James William Henry Veitch can safely leave him to his parents’ care.

And, though of course this could not have been in Michael Veitch’s mind when he first toured this show around Victoria in 2018, I could not help thinking of the cruise ship held in quarantine in Japan and the dreadful news of the spread of the new coronavirus around the world.  The past is not such a different country, after all.

In character as Ship's Surgeon
James William Henry Veitch

Michael Veitch

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2020: Crunch Time by David Williamson

John Wood and Guy Edmonds

Crunch Time by David Williamson. Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, February 19 – April 9, 2020.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
February 19

Director – Mark Kilmurry; Set and Costume Designer – Lauren Peters; Lighting Designer – Nicholas Higgins; Sound Realiser – Anthony Lorenz

Cast (alphabetical)
Diane Craig (Helen); Megan Drury (Susy); Guy Edmonds (Luke); Matt Minto (Jimmy); Emma Palmer (Lauren); John Wood (Steve)

Photos by Prudence Upton

Diane Craig and John Woods
as Helen and Steve
in Crunch Time by David Williamson
Ensemble Theatre 2020

Crunch Time is a quite harsh-sounding title for a realistic study of generational succession told with some tenderness and humour.  Perhaps, since the author has announced that, after 50 years, this is definitely to be his last play, he may be sensing a Sword of Damocles descending. 

That’s certainly the feeling David Williamson has given Steve, as he retires, when he has to decide which son – the younger Jimmy with a Business Management degree; or the elder Luke with a combined Engineering/Law degree – will be given control of his highly successful engineering company.  The complex intra-family relationships are played out very well indeed by John Wood, Matt Minto and Guy Edmonds – the  father, himself trained as an engineer and somewhere on ‘the spectrum’, knowing that Jimmy’s social communication skills are essential for the continuing and expanding success of the company, cuts the highly intelligent but also autistic Luke off the Board.

Steve married Helen because he was fascinated by her playing the cello – the Goldmark Variations – when they were students.  Diana Craig’s playing on stage at the key moment of tenderness is a highlight. But, she points out, the Goldmark is the only piece of music – and indeed the only work of art of any kind – that Steve can recognise.

Diane Craig and Megan Drury
as Helen and Susy

Megan Drury playing Jimmy’s wife Susy (they have three children) gives us the most rational clear-sighted character in the play, recognising how she was so attracted to Jimmy – and why so many other women were and still are; and how she can become a genuine friend for Luke while they supervise their combined grandchildren.  Though Jimmy says he will “never do it again”, we laugh with Susy and recognise her right to independence.

Megan Drury and Matt Minto
as Susy and Jimmy

Susy also explains to Luke how being ‘ordinary’ is the right thing for him, even though Emma Palmer as Luke’s wife, Lauren, can’t stand his insistence on being himself, which means stating with great accuracy every truth, about her and everything else, any more.  So she leaves the children to him to find a less ‘ordinary’ life.

Emma Palmer and Guy Edmonds
as Lauren and Luke

Guy Edmonds and Megan Drury
as Luke and Susy

Of course, rumours will abound that David Williamson has finally written an autobiographical play, since he originally trained and even lectured as an engineer, and finally married a writer (they met in 1971) who is quoted on the ABC in 2009: “And Kristin says their blended family - two of her children with her ex-husband, two from David's first marriage and one mutual child ('They call him the love child') - cringe at their bohemian tales.”
[ https://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-04-03/wifes-biography-turns-tables-on-david-williamson/1639908  ]

It is true that this play’s family relationships feel to me more personal in nature, but then I have reviewed formally only about a dozen of his more than fifty plays.  It is the character of Steve, facing up to serious adversity, that brings up those feelings.  John Wood’s performance is so much deeper than being a character who represents a man of a particular place and time.  Whereas in the past I have seen Williamson’s work as highly valuable “comedy of manners” social commentary, this play – not only in Steve, but especially in Guy Edmond’s Luke and Megan Drury’s Suzy – shows psychological understanding of a different order, I think.

Of the playwriting and production, I suspect there is more development work to do.  It may be Williamson’s last play, but perhaps he may not retire absolutely yet.  The performance by Diane Craig of Steve’s wife Helen needed to create much more empathy in us, watching.  The clue, for me, was in the question on how Steve had rated Jimmy at 10, but Luke at only 8.5; while Luke had rated his father at only 2, but his mother at 10.

As a fly-on-the-wall audience member, I wanted to rate Helen at 10 but she came through to me at about 6.  Yet at the every end, she completely unexpectedly reveals her ‘bad girl’ behaviour before meeting Steve – her bohemian tale, I guess.  It’s either in the writing, or maybe in the directing, but Diane Craig’s performance needed to establish that aspect of Helen’s character – the liveliness and warmth it implies – from early in the play.

I also think that, in the directing, and perhaps because of the writing, the first several scenes lost focus and energy because they come through as not much more than exposition.  They tell us bits of the story, but it’s not until maybe 20 minutes in that our attention begins to become focussed, and therefore engaged, in the feelings of the characters as they interact.  Then we begin to work out for ourselves what is now and has been going on between these people.  The backstory needs to grow out of the immediate present, from the very first scene.

It was, of course, a great privilege to be present on the opening night of the last play of what I can only call (awfully) an ‘iconic’ Australian playwright.  I deliberately have not given away too much here, because it’s important for me not to preempt your expectations.  There’s a depth of humanity in this play which should catch you by surprise.

I think, finally, it’s not unreasonable to point out the role of the Ensemble Theatre’s relationship with David Williamson, and especially his relationship with Sandra Bates, who first attended the classes of the Ensemble’s founder, Hayes Gordon, in 1968, and was invited by him to become artistic director of the company in 1986. 

Since 1995 Ensemble Theatre has staged “24 Williamson plays…including 19 world premieres, and produced three national tours.”  Sandra Bates herself directed 15 of these in the boatshed in-the-round, beginning with Emerald City, as well as additionally directing the three plays, Face to Face, A Conversation and Charitable Intent in the Jack Manning Trilogy at The Concourse, in Chatswood in 2014, before handing over the artistic directorship to Mark Kilmurry in 2016.

David Williamson has written on her retirement: "The Ensemble Theatre and I have had a very fruitful relationship now for many years.  I love this little theatre and I love the philosophy that guides it and that philosophy has been driven for over thirty years now by one remarkable woman, Sandra Bates. 

“Her philosophy of theatre is disarmingly simple.  Program contemporary plays from Australia, America and elsewhere that have something to say to contemporary society.  Program plays that tell a strong story that impacts on the audience rather than plays consumed by their own cleverness that few relate to or understand.  Plays of emotional impact that tell stories about real people facing real and pressing problems.

“The Ensemble is a theatre in which storytelling about contemporary society comes first and that's what I love about it.”

Indeed.


[see http://www.stagewhispers.com.au/news/sandra-bates-retire-ensemble ]

Emma Palmer as Lauren

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2020: Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam by Peter Goldsworthy

Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam, adapted by Steve Rodgers from the novella by Peter Goldsworthy.  A Riverside National Theatre of Parramatta production presented by Belvoir, at Belvoir Street Upstairs, February 6 – March 8, 2020.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
February 16

Director – Darren Yap; Set and Costume Designer – Emma Vine; Lighting and AV Designer – Verity Hampson; Composer and Sound Designer – Max Lambert and Sean Peter.

Cast (alphabetical)
Valerie Bader (Grandma / Dr Eve), Emma Jackson (Linda), Mark Lee (Grandpa / Priest), Liam Nunan (Ben), Grace Truman (Wol), Matthew Whittet (Rick)

__________________________________________________________

Though I am used to being emotionally stirred by theatre, this presentation of a controversial story as a live performance disturbs me. 

When reading a fiction, I can set myself at arm’s length, pause to consider the author’s intention, and decide whether or not to read any further.  In the theatre, as the father’s intention to kill himself and his 12-year-old daughter at some point of his choosing when it seemed that her leukaemia could not be stopped from killing her, I could not stop being taken beyond an unacceptable conclusion.

Though some people may simply consider this to be a ‘sad’ story of a father willing to sacrifice himself in the name of ‘love’ for his daughter – by keeping her company right through until the end – this motivation (in a fictional character, remember) is warped in the extreme.  This father justifies committing suicide, and murder.

Perhaps Peter Goldsworthy’s intention was to open up the reader’s thinking about this family’s twisted faith, apparently acceptable to the fictional priest.  Perhaps it was meant to be enlightening about the nature of a God who can kill a child.  Perhaps voluntary euthanasia was the issue in Goldsworthy’s mind – except that Wol (fictional again, don’t forget) was too young to be legally responsible, and Rick was certainly not terminally ill – nor of sound mind.

Perhaps, as I thought the title of the work meant, the novella and the play would be taking a severely critical view of religious belief which, for example, can lead Catholic priests to refuse to report confessions of child abuse, and protect their confreres from criminal charges.  That God is certainly not Love – and Rick’s ‘love’ makes him think that he is God.

The adaptation for the stage, unfortunately, is not clear in its intention.  The style is essentially naturalistic, except for an occasional speech from the father which seems to be aimed directly at the audience.  If the whole play had been presented in this out-to-us form then perhaps I could have stood mentally back enough to see the story as simply being about issues.  But the apparent realism of the interactions between characters, particularly between Linda and her mother and the treating doctor, and the understandable sullenness in Ben’s responses, made the play awful to watch.  So then the ending, when his mother reminds Ben, now four years older, of how his father carried out injecting his daughter and himself, as if this was a normal – in fact loving – thing to do, was just sickening.

I didn’t feel sad.  If anything, it made me feel angry that Rick had left his wife and son with no support after the unavoidable death of her young daughter and his younger sister. 

So, on reflection, I think if Goldsworthy intended to make Rick a heroic loving father, then that was a serious error of judgement on Goldsworthy’s part.  Reviews (at, for example,  https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/615999.Jesus_Wants_Me_For_a_Sunbeam )
range from “This may be the worst book I have had the misfortune to encounter. One of the most utterly hideous, contrived and disingenuous novels I have ever read.” to “I nearly shed a tear at the end of this novella, not because I was sad that the father and daughter were dying, but that the father was spinning the biggest lie - that they would be together in death.” [because] “A rejection of God and Jesus would result in them not being together and his ultimate suicide was really for nothing.”

One said simply, “A very good read. I read it at one sitting.”

Be warned, then, that you will see a well-designed and very well performed show; but be prepared for what you might shed a tear for.

Set design by Emma Vine
Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeamby Peter Goldsworthy
Riverside National Theatre of Parramatta
presented at Belvoir 2020
Photo: M McKone

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2020: No Pay? No Way! by Dario Fo (and Franca Rame)

No Pay? No Way! by Dario Fo, adapted by Marieke Hardy.  Sydney Theatre Company at Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre, February 10 – March 20, 2020 (and at Riverside Parramatta April 1-4, 2020).

Reviewed by Frank McKone
February 15

Director – Sarah Giles; Designer – Charles Davis; Lighting Designer – Paul Jackson; Composer and Sound Designer – Steve Francis

Assistant Director – Madeleine Humphreys; Fight and Movement Director – Tim Dashwood; Voice and Text Coach – Charmian Gradwell; Literal Translator – Thomas McPherson

Cast (alphabetical order):
Giovanni – Glen Hazeldine; Luigi – Rahel Romahn; Antonia – Helen Thomson; Sergeant/Inspector/Undertaker/Old Man – Aaron Tsindos; Margherita – Catherine Văn-Davies
 

Photos by Prudence Upton

_____________________________________________________________

Helen Thomson (Antonia) and Glenn Hazeldine (Giovanni)
in No Pay? No Way!
Sydney Theatre Company 2020

Behind the uproaringly side-splitting laughter in Marieke Hardy’s adaptation of this Italian 1970s political farce (almost certainly by Dario Fo and Franca Rame, dubbed “the person behind the political”) is a highly intelligent design and directing concept.  Sarah Giles and Charles Davis parallel the collapse of the capitalist economic system by making the stage set of a neat, just adequate but seemingly substantial housing unit, break into scattered pieces around the characters, who struggle along until the point is reached where there is nothing left to do except sing a sad song of hope.

Though Hardy writes “if all else fails, let’s just be together for a spell and hold hands and laugh at how messed up it all is”, Sarah Giles’ ending is less hopeful.  Her characters sing quietly and beautifully, but distinctly apart from each other among different bits of their shattered environment.  They have made us laugh with references to our very own daily political farce, then sing us into a blackout which is a grateful pause in the madness.  We applaud in a moment about which we can only think, this is “Sad but True!”

I suspect, from the Youtube examples I can find, that Giles and her designer Charles Davis have taken us a step further into the absurd than Fo and Rame envisaged.  Other productions seem to finish on a note of defiance, still in the neat home setting, for which audiences cheer as the last line is spoken.  We went quiet in the darkness before the absolutely justified burst of applause as the lights came up for the curtain call.

Farce, of course, relies on surprise, so there is no way – with or without pay – that I can describe what happens in this production.  You simply must go along to the prestigious Sydney Opera House to laugh at pretension and laugh at the collapse of the ordinary good order of life.  Just watch out for the caesarian breaking of the waters, the brine and the olives.

Say no more – though you may understand a few more jokes if you know Italian.

It is a terrific production – an adaptation that Fo and Rame would surely be proud of, however horrified they might be to know that we still need to face up to the same, perhaps even worse farcical state in Australia and the world today.  I remember George W. Bush ringing in the new century 20 years ago with the cry “A New World Order!”

Ha! Ha!  No Way!

Rahel Romahn (Luigi)

Catherine Văn-Davies (Margherita)

Aaron Tsindos (as Sergeant)

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2020: The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan

Marta Dusseldorp
in rehearsal for
The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan
Sydney Theatre Company
Photo: Brett Boardman

The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan.  Sydney Theatre Company at Roslyn Packer Theatre, February 4 – March 7, 2020.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
February 15

Director – Paige Rattray; Designer – David Fleischer; Lighting Designer – Nick Schlieper; Composer and Sound Designer – James Brown.
Assistant Director – Kenneth Moraleda; Fight and Movement Director – Nigel Poulton; Voice and Text Coach – Charmian Gradwell.

Cast:
Hester Collyer – Marta Dusseldorp; Freddie Page - Fayssal Bazzi; William Collyer – Matt Day
Mr Miller – Paul Capsis; Mrs Elton – Vanessa Downing
Philip Welch – Brandon McClelland; Ann Welch – Contessa Treffone; Jackie Jackson – Charlie Garber
______________________________________________________________

The play begins with a beautiful scene.  A blue ocean extends beyond our horizon as if it stretches on forever.The sky is a clear uninterrupted pale blue.

In the ocean is a tiny island, dark against the light.  A point of focus in this Deep Blue Sea.  This is Hester.  She is her tiny island – her dark world.

By the end of the play we understand, as Mr (one-time Dr) Miller tells Hester, “… the world is a dark enough place for even a little flicker to be welcome.”

Marta Dusseldorp and Paul Capsis
as Hester Collyer and Mr Miller
in The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan
Production Photos: Daniel Boud

Why is clearly-gay Miller no longer entitled to be ‘Dr’?  Because in 1950s Britain, homosexuality was a crime, punishable by jail.

Suicide was also a crime, though quite what the Christian belief behind the law imagined would be the punishment is a moot question.  Of course, to attempt suicide….

What if, though, you were a woman, daughter of a local vicar, marrying ‘above’ your station into the expectations of the ‘greater public school’ men – wealthy, elite?

And that’s before the play now begins, after ten months in love with a dashing RAF wartime fighter pilot – a famous but by now insecure past-his-prime test pilot.  Where did Lady Hester Collyer meet Freddie?  At the elite golf club, Sunningdale, of course.

Matt Day and Marta Dusseldorp
as Sir William Collyer and Lady Hester

Marta Dusseldorp and Fayssal Bazzi
as Hester and Freddie

Does this sound like your cup-of-tea, in modern Australia?  You’ll be surprised.  Just as director Paige Rattray describes:  “When I went to see the 2015 production at the National Theatre in London, I was aware of Rattigan’s reputation as an observer of the British middle-class, a society playwright, but was not prepared to meet one of the most complex, nuanced and thoroughly human female characters in the history of Western theatre.”

Scene changing by actors in character - the 'fourth wall' is broken
L-R: Contessa Treffone, Vanessa Downing, Brandon McClelland, Marta Dusseldorp and stage crew
as
Ann Welch (neighbour), Mrs Elton (landlady), Philip Welch (neighbour), Hester Collyer 

To then find Marta Dusseldorp to play this role was an inspired choice.  In this clever, also surprising set design, what would have been in the 1950s a conventional English sitting-room ‘fourth-wall’ scene turns into an exciting modern play reflecting on the past attitudes to mental health, sexual identity – and thus the position of women as independent people in control of their lives – attitudes still boiling away beneath our attempts today to change that dark world into a kinder place.

It worries me that the image in Rattigan’s play of the ‘deep blue sea’, which is attractive and offers the possibility of hope, is nowadays seen as ‘the black dog’, seemingly a vicious threat to escape from.  But Marta’s characterisation of Rattigan’s Lady Hester Collyer catches us out.  She achieves wonderfully the intention that director Paige has for this production:

“In moving Hester through her despair, through her reliance on other people to a place where she can exist for and with herself”…we have a “model for a new way to look at life, and a new way to survive it.”

If you had thought, as I had, that Terence Rattigan had less to offer than, say, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams or others of his era,  Sydney Theatre Company proves us to be mistaken. 

Not to be missed.



© Frank McKone, Canberra

2020: Theatre Network Australia - Some Critical Information

Posted by Frank McKone

https://www.tna.org.au/pre-budget-submission-for-the-2020-21-federal-budget/

Media Contact:Nicole Beyer nicole@tna.org.au

2020: Platform Paper No.62

Performing Arts Markets and their Conundrums by Justin Macdonnell.  Platform Papers No. 62, February 2020.  Quarterly essays on the performing arts from Currency House.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

APAM or APAX? That is the question.  What are Performing Arts Markets for?  Are Performing Arts Exchanges better?

Justin Macdonnell is more than well-qualified to ask the questions: he has “been employed in arts management, producing and consultancy for over forty years.  His early career was occupied variously as General Manager of the State Opera of Australia, Director of the National Opera of New Zealand, Program Director of the Festival of Sydney, Executive Director of the Confederation of Australian Professional Performing Arts and Artistic Director of the Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, USA.  As principal of Macdonnell Promotions he was for twenty years one of Australia’s leading arts management consultants to both the public and private sectors and to scores of arts organisations here and abroad.”

In a lengthy but fascinating history of arts markets on every continent, he even wonders about an unexpected “elephant in the room: the entire face-to-face market model is based on continued extensive international air travel, not only to assemble delegates at one or more market-like events in Australia—a great distance by anyone’s standards—but to continue to support international touring itself.  Despite Qantas’s optimistic claims of being carbon neutral by 2050, there is already a known, marked reluctance among those concerned at the threat of climate change to use such transport.”

We Canberrans didn’t need to fly anywhere when the first Australian Performing Arts Market seemed, to me at least, to appear quite out of the blue in the midst of the 1994 National Festival of Australian Theatre, directed by the doyenne of Kurt Weill singing, Robyn Archer AO.  APAM was set up by the Australia Council for the Arts, a statutory authority, nowadays simply known as The Australia Council, which is the Australian Government's principal arts funding and advisory body. The Council is the national advocate for the arts and its purpose is to “champion and invest in” Australian arts.

Macdonnell sees the what-for? question having two answers, which have had different degrees of emphasis in the parallel arts markets which have been established around the world.  He writes, “in order to have an effective trade fair one must have buyers and sellers. It is arguable that in APAM, while there have been a number of buyers, there has never really been selling. The work has been displayed but not sold.”

Then he goes on to say, “most observers today would acknowledge that these events have a networking and relationshipbuilding purpose alongside their buying and selling
role. While there is concern with the narrowness of what ‘market’ might mean, many feel that it has been useful to add new dimensions to the program in order to facilitate what might be called ‘curated conversations’.”

On one occasion, at a US market, “Australian colleagues and I once did a roaring trade there with mass-produced clip-on koalas.”  But then he contrasts this approach, saying “But in the end success is achieved mostly after long-standing connection between artist manager/producer and presenter.”

Macdonnell’s descriptions of the experiences of attending the many dozens of arts markets, as potential buyers, hopeful sellers and professional management and artistic networkers are not only interesting in their own light, but raise for us as critics a fuller understanding of the milieu – the world-wide culture of theatre – out of which the individual performances we see emerge.

A particularly fascinating case, seen here at the Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre (The Q), was the dance work by Queensland’s Expressions Dance Company combined with BeijingDance/LDTX in two parts, Auto Cannibal by Stephanie Lake and Encircling Voyage by MA Bo under the overall title Matrix.  This international cooperative venture received five strongly positive reviews on this blog alone (November 2019), demonstrating the value of the very networking and relationship building that Macdonnell emphasises – while also showing how the arts market provides the opportunity for the director of a small regional performing arts centre to buy in, to great acclaim, new cutting-edge work to expand a local audience’s appreciation of the arts.

In the past few years, the government-initiated and managed APAM now faces the establishment of Australian Performing Arts Connections as “the national peak body representing performing arts presenters and creators in Australia”.  While APAM moves towards conducting a number of markets in the year, each in a different city with a focus (for example on Indigenous work in Darwin), 2020 sees the APAC annual conference combine with Performing Arts Exchange to become an annual APAX. 

Perhaps, implies Macdonnell, APAM will become too spread out and diffuse; less effective for developing artistic relationships; less effective for selling to international buyers.  Perhaps, he writes, APAX—the Australian Performing Arts Exchange—stating that: “98 per cent of people coming to PAX and the conferences this year [2019] said that ‘Market and audience development are a critical part of the performing arts sector’ may in time challenge APAM for its place as the major performing arts gathering for the nation and New Zealand.”

So he concludes (with some reference to the role nowadays of social media and internet communication) “Regular opportunities for meeting and talking and learning are a central factor in maintaining such relationships—call them friendships if you will—and to the extent that such meeting and talking can be structured, goodwill and trust is gained and grown over time and when all is said and done, no amount of technology or wizardry of other kinds has yet found a better way.”


Media Contact: Martin Portus mportus2@tpg.com.au

Currency House:
https://www.currency.com.au/books/platform-papers/platform-papers-62-performing-arts-markets-and-their-conundrums/ 


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2020: Anthem by Andrew Bovell, Patricia Cornelius, Melissa Reeves, Christos Tsiolkas and Irine Vela.

Anthem written by Andrew Bovell, Patricia Cornelius, Melissa Reeves, Christos Tsiolkas and Irine Vela. 

Arts Centre Melbourne and Performing Lines at Sydney Festival 2020, Roslyn Packer Theatre January 15-19, 2020.

Uncensored by Andrew Bovell
Terror by Patricia Cornelius
7-Eleven and Chemist Warehouse, a love story by Melissa Reeves
Brothers and Sisters by Christos Tsiolkas
Resistance by Irine Vela

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 17

Director – Susie Dee; Designer – Marg Horwell; Lighting Designer – Paul Jackson; Composer, Music Director and Sound Designer – Irine Vela; Movement Consultant – Natalie Cursio.

Aboriginal Cultural Dramaturg – Bryan Andy
Creative Producer (2016-March 2019) – Daniel Clarke

Characters from Anthem
https://www.artscentremelbourne.com.au/event-archive/2019/miaf/anthem

 Cast (alphabetical order):
Maude Davey, Reef Ireland, Ruci Kaisila, Thuso Lekwape, Amanda Ma, Maria Mercedes, Tony Nikolakopoulos, Eryn Jean Norvill, Sahil Saluja, Osamah Sami, Eva Seymour, Carly Sheppard

Musicians
Jenny M. Thomas (violin), Dan Witton (cello)

Anthem consists of five scenes with linked characters, bookended by two, unknown to each other, on their way to the airport when a political protest holds up their train.  They are in France.  He is apparently Black African Middle-class returning to Melbourne, of working class origin but now educated and successful in business.  His views are centre right conservative. Brexit for him is about economics and Britain’s trading position. She is  apparently White Middle-class, with centre-left small-L liberal views.  Brexit for her is about racism and anti-immigration attitudes to which she strongly objects – on the way accusing him of racism. 

They discuss – argue about – current issues before fading above the mainstage action, largely on Melbourne suburban trains, with one at a 7-Eleven store and another in a company office (not 7-Eleven nor Chemist Warehouse).  The five scenes run for two hours (with a 20 minute interval), until Ruci Kaisila as an Aboriginal beggar who has observed and sung at significant points (did I hear “We are One, We Are Australian”?  I certainly heard “I still call Australia home”), sings the anthem, "Amazing Grace".

At this point, the two waiting on their train in France reappear, in a flashback, without having reached any clear political consensus, and are pleased that their train begins to move again.

But is Australia’s train going anywhere?

The black man returning from education in France turns out to be the youngest of four siblings, who resent his having left them behind in poverty.  Among the others appears to be a young unmarried/divorced mother with a six-year old son who bangs his head against the doors on a train when he is being taken by court order to stay with his violent father.  His mother is a “rough white Aussie” who believes the country “belongs to us”, but can also understand Greek, when a Greek couple complain to each other about the woman’s behaviour.  Remember when Melbourne was known as the largest Greek city outside Greece itself?

One of her brothers appears to be of “Middle-Eastern appearance” and takes a relatively benign approach.  But the last brother, seemingly white Irish-Anglo Australian, surely would have used his bounding aggro energy violently in the Cronulla riots if he had not been a Melbournian from the outer suburban fringe instead.

Interestingly, since the Sydney Theatre Company will soon be presenting Dario Fo’s “No Pay, No Way”, the thread running through Anthem is about workers not being paid (and trying to use a starting gun to threaten to kill to get the money they are owed); beggars asking for money without success, and even refusing (and being told by others to refuse) to take money which is not genuinely offered; and a middle-class woman left homeless (by a husband taking a new young wife) trying to sponge off her previous Asian cleaning woman who was never properly paid. 

The black son of the family (presumably with diverse parents) offers $30,000 to his siblings, which his sister is inclined to accept until his violent Aussie, Aussie, Aussie brother forces the educated successful black brother out of the proudly poor family who refuse to accept charity.

For the older generation like me, who still remember the Sydney Communist New Theatre production of The Good Soldier Schweik, it’s good to see true agit prop theatre again.  Unfortunately I missed the Melbourne Workers Theatre’s Who’s Afraid of the Working Class? 20 years ago, when these five writers had first been brought together, then under director Julian Meyrick (whose Platform Paper “The Retreat of our National Drama” was reviewed on this blog May 15, 2014).

The style of presentation of Anthem is true expressionist agit prop – that is ‘agitation propaganda’.  Moveable rostra are shifted around to represent being on a train or street or office – no naturalism here.  The musicians play on stage, in amongst the action.  The action and spoken word is upfront – forthright in the extreme.  The lighting is full on and or full off.  The character of the Aboriginal beggar is directly out of the tradition of the Narrator in The Threepenny Opera who sings “Mack the Knife”.

But Anthem is perhaps even more bleak than the ending of The Threepenny Opera, when the Narrator sings (Hugh MacDiarmid translation):

Now we’ve got our happy ending
Everything is on the mend
Yes, the man with lots of money
He can buy a happy end!

There are some men live in darkness
While the rest have light for free
You can spot those in the limelight
Those in darkness you don’t see.

How ironic is it that an Aboriginal sings Amazing Grace as the ethnically (non-Indigenous) mixed Australian family tears down the Australian flag (which still includes the Union Jack – perhaps for not much longer) in a state of political frustration?

What train are we on?  Let alone where is it going?  This is a thinking person’s theatre show which should not be missed (especially by those who need to see it most).

Frank McKone's reviews also can be seen at www.ccc-canberracriticscircle.blogspot.com

2020: The Aspie Hour - Sydney Festival

The Aspie Hour.  Created, written and performed by Sophie Smyth and Ryan Smedley.

Director and Dramaturg – Fiona Scott-Norman
Musical Director and Pianist – Rainer Pollard

Sydney Festival 2020 at Carriageworks, Bay 20  January 14-18, 2020.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 15

What on earth is an Aspie?  If you’re on the spectrum, you may be thinking is this what normal people call a joke, until Sophie explains that it’s a short-cut word for a person who has Asperger’s Syndrome.

Fortunately I have known someone with Asperger’s over many years.  He would probably not think being called an Aspie was funny.  It’s no joke when you don’t understand how to initiate a conversation, say.  Or realise that what someone said was meant to be a joke, or it was an innuendo and actually meant something quite different from what the words said.  My friend’s an expert computer programmer.

Sophie explained, for example, that “come up and have a cup of tea” means “sex”.

The Aspie Hour is a very pleasant entertainment.  Because they each have an obsession with musicals, but not the same sort of musicals, they demonstrate their tendency to concentrate on informative details and a strictly logical approach by performing songs from an enormously wide range of musicals, mainly with their own words.

Ryan prefaces his song and dance routines with proof of his factual knowledge by having members of the audience call out a year date, like 1955, 1984 and three others last night.  He immediately tells us which musical that year was the most popular, or which in his view was the best, even though his choice may not have won awards.  And I am sure that he knew his facts.

His songs tell the story of a visit to New York, the source of more musicals than anywhere else in the world (he claims).  The essence of his song and dance act is about what he had to learn about social contacts in order to travel by himself to achieve his dream – to see a musical each night for 20 nights and meet famous musical performers.  And, I guess from his show, he learnt song and dance skills from his obervations.

Sophie took a different line, focussed on the elements of what makes up a musical, from the intro dance number, through the I want solo to the grand finale, which has nothing much to do with the rest of the plot.  She explained what we needed to know about each element before she sang, perfectly in style, each type of number.

For me, Sophie gets a special award for “Over the Rainbow”: “If little blue birds can fly, fly over the rainbow, why, then oh why, can’t I?”  This was a moment of tender appreciation by us all, through quiet tears for an Aspie’s frustration and at the same time recognition in the strength and quality of her performance that indeed, she can fly over her rainbow.

As they have written, “The purpose of this show is to relate ourselves to the audience, asking ‘have you had an experience like this?  We’re not all that different.”  How true, and how enjoyable.

Sophie Smyth and Ryan Smedley
in The Aspie Hour
Photo supplied

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2020: I'm a Phoenix, Bitch by Bryony Kimmings

I’m a Phoenix, Bitch.  Conceived, written and performed by Bryony Kimmings (UK).  Sydney Festival 2020, at Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre, January 14-17 2020.

Co-commissioned by Battersea Arts Centre, Arts Centre Melbourne, Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts and supported by Latitude Festival.  Supported by the British Council and Arts Council England using public funding.  In association with Avalon Management.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 14

Directors – Kirsty Housley and Bryony Kimmings

Art Director – David Curtis-Ring; Projection Designer – Will Duke; Composer – Tom Parkinson; Sound Designer – Lewis Gibson; Lighting Designer – Johanne Jensen; Dramaturgical Support – Nina Steiger; Choreography and Rehearsal Direction – Sarah Blanc; Makeup Design – Guy Common.

“Performing on stage is always a risk (break a leg!), but the greatest risk – to your sanity, if not in failing your audience – is to turn your own life into a public performance, and then perform it yourself.”  In quite recent times I have coined the term “Personal Theatre” for this kind of work.

Two especially powerful pieces were RED by Liz Lea  (reviewed here March 9, 2018), a dance work expressing her pain and determination to keep performing while suffering ever-continuing endometriosis; and Ghenoa Gela’s experience of shock in finding her personal salvation in re-connecting with her traditional culture through dance on her first visit to her mother’s home island Erub in the Torres Strait, after being born and brought up in Rockhampton.  My Urrwai is reviewed here January 21, 2018.

Based on dance with some story-telling, these were demanding and impressive works, though relatively straightforward theatrically.  I’m a Phoenix, Bitch is centred on Bryony Kimmings’ experience of her psychosis arising from the sudden onset in her baby son of ‘Infantile Spasms’, seemingly life threatening: the beginning of epilepsy. 

Her creating this work for performance arises from the principle of cognitive behavioural therapy – that is, learning to objectify frightening mental experiences and recognise reality through the process of telling others.  So I’m a Phoenix, Bitch begins rather as if Bryony is a stand-up comedian setting up a relationship directly with us, her audience, through humour, about sex, marriage and childbirth.

But as her child is in hospital and her husband has moved out, she finds herself left alone in what was meant to be the ideal little family cottage on an isolated hilltop in the country – fearing for her child’s life.  Her experience is expressed on stage in acting and singing, in a complex set design using live and recorded video, a model of the house, a representation of the hill and the flooded stream that prevents her from obtaining help, with sound miked so that her inner voice sounds male threatening her female self, and a surround soundscape creating her emotions in us as we watch her despair.

The real life experience took place over a two year period, which Bryony structured to make this work in 2018 after a highly successful career following a degree in Modern Drama from Brunel University in 2003, creating multi-platform art works.
[  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryony_Kimmings  ]

In the title she becomes a phoenix in the sense that she learns that even the worst that can happen is just bad luck, and that we must not feel guilty for what, in reality, we cannot control.  As she finally drives away from the house – now rented by another family and no longer haunting Bryony – she tells us 

“And I watched the cottage disappear out of sight in my rear-view mirror.  And for a moment I felt like I was in a film.  But then I stopped doing that.  Because I wasn’t.  This was real fucking life.”

Black out.
And to tremendous applause and a great sense of relief, Bryony takes a bow and takes us back to something like the comedian she had appeared to be at first.  But we now know, “it’s time to love the new Bryony now.  She has sharper edges, she laughs a little less, she is scarred.  But she is who you will need in the next flood.”

I’m a Phoenix, Bitch is an important work of art because it is a story of real experience which becomes a meaningful metaphor for us each to interpret in our own lives.  Though more complex in the form of its expression, this is what Bryony Kimmings’ work has in common with those other works of “Personal Theatre” by Ghenoa Gela and Liz Lea.  They take the risk which is theatre; they succeed through genuine art.

And I note that these works are by women.


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2020: Every Brilliant Thing by Duncan Macmillan, performed by Steve Rodgers

Every Brilliant Thing by Duncan Macmillan, with original performer and co-writer Jonny Donahue.  Belvoir, Sydney, January 11-26 2020.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 12

Director – Kate Champion; Set and Costume Designer – Isabel Hudson; Lighting Designer – Amelia Lever-Davidson; Sound Designer – Steve Francis


Performed by Steve Rodgers (Co-Director)

The ethics of reviewing require the disclosure of potential bias.  The travel writer reveals the company that paid for their travel and accommodation at the holiday destination.  In my case, I have reviewed Steve Rodgers’s work as writer, director or performer a number of times (on this blog) with the note that he was once a student of mine.

The standing ovation he received last night at Belvoir for his solo performance as Narrator, and as co-director with Kate Champion, of Every Brilliant Thing requires me to explain in more detail why I was affected by the nature of this play, and by Steve Rodger’s interpretation of it, in a particular way, the same but different from other audience members.

I went to see the play cold.  That is, I had not been aware of its performance history, including the nomination of Jonny Donahue for several awards following his five months’ showing off-Broadway, also screened as an HBO World of Wonder Special.  My travel plans last year meant I missed the opportunity to see Kate Mulvaney’s performance; nor was I aware that Kate Champion and Steve Rodgers were the directors at that time.  I had not been aware either, of Joyce Morgan’s review in the Sydney Morning Herald (March 17, 2019), nor of any other reviews or commentary.  I had not known that a few clicks into Youtube would show me different stage designs, different actors in the Narrator role on stage and in rehearsal; even interviews with the author and company directors.

Steve Rodgers explaining her task to audience member,
Every Brilliant Thing, January 11 2020
Photo: Brett Boardman

I knew nothing, except that Belvoir advertised this return season, with a smiling photo of Steve Rodgers, as “BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND!” – and not even did I know anything about the content of the play, imagining it to have some reference, perhaps, to My Brilliant Career! 

So I was surprised to be greeted warmly, with a huge hug, by one-time student Steve on the stairs to Belvoir Upstairs, who gave me and my wife a slip of paper numbered 717.  “When you hear me say seven hundred and seventeen, you must read out loud what it says,” he told us.  It read “Nina Simones Voice” (without the apostrophe, the old teacher in me noticed).

“I am reviewing,” I told him.  “Well, then I’d better be good!” he replied, as he moved on and we entered the auditorium to find our seats, kindly provided by Kabuku Public Relations at the usual Row E 25/26.  But instead of the usual centrally-situated view of the acting space taking up the corner of the old tomato sauce factory floor, on the far side was a complete reproduction of the seating on our side.  Theatre completely in-the-round – as I had seen at Belvoir only once before, for Life of Galileo last year (reviewed here August 10, 2019).

Steve Rodgers, a quiet moment in role
Every Brilliant Thing, January 11 2020
Photo: Brett Boardman

 Then what happened stunned me.  I watched my student Steve doing what I had taught him to do in the Drama Room at Hawker College back in 1987.  Suddenly my reviewer’s mortar board hat was perched precariously on my drama teacher’s skin, now even more bald, but still firmly attached.  To review is to write about drama; to teach and learn drama is to simply “Do It” – as one educational drama professional association had named their journal in the 1970s.

Over their two-year course in Years 11/12, I had not run theatre skills training classes, not academic literary or theatre history studies, or even staging theatre productions as my central approach.  Taking up from English educational drama traditions for younger students, particularly of Dorothy Heathcote and Brian Way, and combining those with my experiences, particularly in Sydney with Margaret Barr and Richard Wherrett and strongly influenced by Rex Cramphorn, I focussed my teaching on participation and learning leadership through whole group improvisation.

Classes contained students, mixing those in Year 11 and Year 12, at anywhere from Unit 1 to Unit 6 level of experience.  The basic method was for me, or for a student, or for a small group, to provide a point of stimulation to begin a “workshop”.  This could be as simple as having a person stand in a spotlight.  Others might respond by asking that person a question.  Bit by bit as they answer, that person and everyone in the class find themselves creating roles which determine action, and a drama results.

Among my favourites was one which turned out to be an upperclass garden party, in which I became the silent garden gnome, thoroughly soaked when someone turned the watering system on as a lark, and finally being “accidentally” knocked over.  I was able surruptitiously to escape by unobtrusively rolling into the non-acting space behind the drama room’s surrounding black curtains.

The principal stimulating device in Belvoir’s Every Brilliant Thing was more sophisticated but still very simple: Steve Rodgers (in my terms as last night’s workshop leader) meeting and greeting participants on the stairway, giving some of them mysterious cards with numbers and words to say, coming in with everyone, explaining their tasks to some people with cards – and then, after walking around a little in the central acting space, just quietly standing still (without even a spotlight), looking thoughtful, perhaps a bit worried, until everyone has realised he is there and gone quiet.

Steve learned to do this in Year 12, became a leader in whole-group improvisations which could often become intense dramas (and played a very humorous God Hephaistos in a student written, directed and managed production), before attending my Audition Training extra-curricular class and attaining a place as today’s program records at Theatre Nepean at Western Sydney University.

And then what was so brilliant for me, perhaps even more than for the upstanding, cheering audience at the end of the one millionth Every Brilliant Thing, was how wonderfully well Steve Rodgers melded the written script with his selection of audience members, shifting so easily in and out of his role as the son of a woman who killed herself “in a masculine way” and his role as improvisation workshop leader.

The result is, as Duncan Macmillan clearly hoped for his play, an educational drama of the very best quality.  [  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEbv1bGZhX0  ]  

The humbling thing for me was to see a student so overwhelmingly surpass his teacher in such a magnificent performance – my personal millionth and one Brilliant Thing.

Audience member in role as "Sam" proposing marriage
to Steve Rodgers in role as Narrator
Every Brilliant Thing, January 11 2020
Photo: Brett Boardman

 © Frank McKone, Canberra